That look on your face
by ilexx
Summary: Beka to Rommie. Both unhappy with Dylan... And each other.
1. Take That Look Off Your Face

**Disclaimer**: Andromeda belongs not to me.

**A/N**: It's been kindly pointed out to me on another board that it resembles a song called „Take that look off your face". I normally hate this kind of music and therefore didn't know the song previously, but now I do – and it's a beautiful song; and actually better fitting for the story than the rather humorous poem by Eugen Roth I had in mind while writing it...

_You must be mistaken, I'm sure that you are! There's more than one car with stickers on. And lots of young guys wear courdrary pants. And I'd know if he hadn't gone!_

_Take that look off yor face! I can see through your smile! You would love to be right, I bet, you didn't sleep good last night, couldn't wait to bring all of these bad news to my door. Well, I've got news for you: I knew before._

_I'f I'm not mistaken, it started last year. I'm not very clear how it began... I noticed a change, but I just closed my eyes as only a woman can._

_No, I didn't dig deep. I did not want to know. Well, you don't interfere when you're scared of the things, you might hear. When he's back, you think, I will end it right there and then? Well, my fair weather friend - you're wrong again!_  
(Courtesy of Anzibanonzi over at ExIsle)

Okay, it doesn't apply to the situation exactly, but the mood is certainly there.

**Set **in S 4, before Molly leaves again at the end of „Waking the Tyrant's Device". Rommie is though slightly OOC, although I always had a vague impression of her being a bit jealous at times...

**That look on your face!**

I know it's hurting you. Maybe as much as me. Then again – maybe not. You've always been jealous: first of me, then of every female he ever seemed to fancy, even Trance. And then – time and again – of me afresh. And although I know that you really like me, that you trust me, that you are my friend I wish that I could wipe that look off your face.

I wish that I could wipe out everything, to be quite honest. Especially this transfer request of Dylan's to High Guard High Command. He didn't even ask me, he simply went ahead and asked for Molly to be assigned to the _Andromeda Ascendant_, without asking you, without asking me – I bet he did it even without asking Molly. What if she agrees?

You're still standing here in front of me, prying for my reaction, a smug look in your eyes. Can androids look smug? This android certainly can.

I have to tell you something. But I can't. I can't. Rev left. Trance changed. Tyr ran. And now... now Dylan is... Is what? He doesn't owe me an explanation on this one, he doesn't have to ask me, except... Except I feel he does. Why are you looking at me that way, half expecting, half uncertain and half... satisfied? That's one half too many. Why satisfied? Because you know I'm hurting too over this one? What do you expect me to say?

The night on Ganglia Drift, when he came to look for me in this bar... I thought... I wish you would go away. What am I to say to you? I know what I would like to say...

That I think you're mistaken... That on Ganglia Drift... That he told me that Molly... That there might be lots of explanations as to why he didn't discuss her transfer with us... That he wouldn't lie to us... to me...

But why tell you that? To calm you or me?

I've felt it coming for a long, long time, ever since his latest experience with a black hole... He's ever since been looking for... I don't know... For something none of us could give him, losing himself bit by bit... Like we... - like **I **was losing him. He's changed, he's changed a lot, yet I just shut my eyes like only women do. Understandable, somehow: when you dream something pleasant, you refuse to wake up. Dreams are so comfortable, especially when reality is as scary as ours seems to have become.

I know what you are now expecting me to do. And since you cannot do it, you want me to confront him, to cause a scene, a scandal, to walk out on him – on your behalf and mine. To tell him to get lost and that I give up on him. That way I'll be gone, he'll sooner or later resent Molly for it... and will remain with you.

Well, dear lady, he isn't Tyr, an that is just not going to happen: I let Tyr slip away, but with this one I'll fight it out. So don't celebrate just yet. And don't bother pitying me. If you expect me to throw a tantrum, to start crying... don't. Just don't, all right?

I know it's hurting you so much that you find satisfaction in the fact that it is hurting me, too – but your triumph might prove a lot smaller than you think. That Molly is somehow special to him... I've known that all along. So don't hesitate to look me in the eye and believe me: nothing will break apart. Not this time. Not again. If you want tears from me, I am so very sorry – you won't be getting any.

All of it will pass, this one will go away – just like the others did.

So you might just as well take that look off your face...


	2. Stating the Obvious

Someone wanted Rommie's POV on that.

**Stating the Obvious**

I've got more to tell you, but I don't think I dare now, not after the way you glared at me the last time around.

You stared at me with eyes full of reproach and anger. If looks could kill, if I were not an avatar, if somehow, somewhere deep inside you wouldn't know that all the things you thought of me are not true… I'd be dead. And all this would add up to would be just another case of killing the bearer of bad news.

Because you were right in one respect: Molly IS bad news. But not because of all of those reasons that you dread. The bad news about Molly isn't Molly, Beka. The bad news about Molly is Dylan. And it's you.

I don't have Harper's inbred skills in defining all peculiarities mankind has developed along the millennia; I don't have Trance's empathy for what every being feels nor do I claim the wise insight into human nature Rev Bem seems to have gained over the years. All I can do is observe, and analyse as thoroughly and as objectively as possible what's right in front of me. And this is what I did. I observed Dylan, and you – and yes, I have come to some conclusions. And I can bet my core on it that you'd rather not hear anything about them.

You think that I was jealous of Molly, that I wanted to use you to force her off this ship, away from this crew and out of Dylan's life. And to some extent you even might have been right: I don't want another sassy blonde with great piloting skills staying in Dylan's life and with us anymore than I wanted to have a spoiled alpha female, the unstable yet charismatic leader of a bunch of weirdoes, the immoral sister of an amoral criminal, a strong-headed, challenging commanding officer of some other ship or a fascinating con-artist with a regal bearing along for the ride. None of them really interested in much more than to just add another conquest to their lists and with their minds set on winning their respective… Hmm, I suppose Harper would call them 'pissing contests' with Dylan. And if I were to guess, I'd say that next in line is some pirate-bride or smuggler-queen or whatever else slightly shady, independent, sharp, strong and intriguing woman we might run across.

Does this ring any bells with you? No? Well, it does with me, Beka; and no, it doesn't take a brain the size of a planet to recognise a certain… shall we say "predatory pattern" here, a quite obvious preference in Dylan's… choice of prey. But you, of course, don't. No. You wouldn't. Not ever. Not unless your life depended on it. Or his. Well, tell you what: had Molly stayed, your life or his life or your both' lives and, consequently, the lives of us all just might have depended on it.

You think that you and me and all the Mollies out there are competing for the same place. You're wrong, we're not. You're humans and me, I am a warship. A sentient one, with feelings, but those feelings match **my** nature, not yours, Beka. I do love Dylan, I want him to be safe and happy and out of harm's way, I need him and I miss him when he's not around. I know his every mood, I like to have him around, to see him think and move and talk and play and… well, everything really. But so I did with Perim; and if one day something should happen to Dylan, I know that I will do so with you, too. Even though it might well be true that because of what we went through together, I probably always will love Dylan a bit more. Nonetheless, this isn't what he wants and - more importantly: he is not what I want, either.

The only ones I ever loved in a way to make me want with them this place you think I might be wanting with Dylan were Gabriel and Metis, because to some extent they both were as timeless, as perennial as I am, and as you're not. However, the only ones I ever was jealous of where Dylan is concerned were Hector – and you, Beka.

I think it's clear, why Hector. And you… Well, you I'm jealous of because…

No, I'm not jealous; I am angry, Beka. I'm angry because at one point, probably when you were just a foetus in your mother's womb, something – some**body**, and I guess Rev would say the Divine – reached out and touched you, offering you the two most precious gifts that I've ever seen bestowed on anyone, a small gift and a great one.

You see, that gut instinct and those sensitive hands of yours… Together they're worth trillions of gold-thrones when in slipstream, where – compared to that – all of Dylan's limbs thrown in together with all his careful training don't add up to much more than a dime. Dylan's got the brains and the education, but you – you've got the talent.

The other gift you have, the big one, is that life-force of yours. One that burns so strongly and so brightly that it seems to shine through every one of your pores. And it lures people to you, it made Dylan succumb to it almost the second he set his eyes on you for the very first time. It makes one want to see that life-force preserved, protected at all cost, while at the same time it inspires trust and love in good and decent men. You know that, but you don't trust yourself and your knowledge. You fight it, you reject it, thinking you don't deserve the love of nice guys, Beka. And so you go instead for the dangerously shrewd, lying, dumb, pretty bad boys, all of that just because you don't respect the gifts you have received, the feelings they inspire and the responsibilities that come out of them.

In the long run that would, of course, be just your problem. But what it adds up to, is that you don't respect yourself. And that makes it MY problem. Because it leads to Leydons, to Abels and to Tyrs. Just as it also leads to Sashas, Turas and Mollies. And when that happens, Beka, it's somehow always **me** ending up with the fear that I'm going to lose either you or Dylan or both, all the while the two of you fool around, mostly to the point where you get hurt and can't make it out of the hot seat without the other one standing by and throwing the bucky-cable to pull you in. Had Dylan not been there to sort things out with Abel, had you not been there to keep Tura in line for him, chances are pretty good that we all would have ended up badly.

Harper would say that this _sucks _– and for once I agree. Because this isn't just about slipstream and the things that go on or not between a man and a woman, and how all of it is magic, instinct, passion and dreams. It's also about jobs, your job and Dylan's. I am a warship and you are my crew. I can't just stand by, watching, resigned that such is life with humans, and that this was to be expected with hormone-ridden guys and irrational women, and that we were bound to end up like this with Dylan being one of those, you being one of these. I can't because neither you nor Dylan are 'one of them': you both are two of me.

Molly won't stay, Beka. I don't know exactly why, but it might just be because she's not merely a sassy blonde with great piloting skills and a big mouth, but also one with brains. And with too much self-respect to enter a cat-fight for a lost cause.

And Dylan IS a lost cause. Back in the days I could see it in his eyes how much he really liked her, how he allowed himself to even fall in love with her for a little while. But then she entered the Academy, and he was off again, and after sighing softly in one corridor or other for a couple of days, he didn't feel the need, not ONCE in more than two years, to so much as send her a message to ask her how she's doing, although it didn't take him long to fall for her anew the second time around again.

I don't know, what that tells you. But it tells me – and I suspect that it also told Molly, now that she finally met you – that more than with her or with any other potential candidate, what Dylan is in love with is the very concept of a stunning presence able and more than willing to meet him head-on. So she faced the truth and gracefully bowed out. Which, my dear friend, is more than you will ever deign to do.

But if this goes on much longer, one day some less smart Molly or a more ruthless Tyr will step out of the shadows and take advantage of it. I am not jealous, Beka – and I am not trying to make you solve my problems, but I **do** have a problem. A problem you've created. And you know what? Dylan's right: you do inspire trust, even in those like me, who – unlike him – don't take risks when called upon to tell the real hearts from the fake ones. I've trusted you with me, I've trusted you with us, I finally even came around and trusted you with Dylan: to keep him safe, protect him from Magog, Nietzscheans, black holes. And now I'm asking you to protect him from you, too. Please, solve the problem, Beka. Make up your mind, commit; or else, if you can't do that, step aside like Molly, leave space – **enough** space, Beka – for someone else instead. Somebody less afraid that things could get real. Either way, quit playing. Before someone gets killed.


End file.
